We’ve always liked our colorful Peacock design, so we focused on just a single feather. Plus, we’ve been seeing a lot of peacock feathers in the fashion market and decorative arts. The feather is airbrushed with a rainbow of iridescent paint, and its centerpiece is a large Swarovski jewel, about 3/8″ in diameter.

We never stop innovating and building new equipment. Here is our newest machine to alleviate a tiresome job, conditioning polymer clay. Some of our products are decorated with parts made from the same polymer clay you buy in hobby shops. Such clays often need conditioning. They are too hard to work with. This requires kneading—a lot of kneading. Polymer clay hobbyists often use a home pasta machine to knead clay; we own four of them! But, we needed (no pun intended) more capacity. So, we built this large clay conditioner to make this disdainful job easier. To give you an idea of its size, the two steel rolls are 3.5″ in diameter and 12″ long, and that’s a one pound block of polymer clay on the catch tray. To soften the clay, the operator lets the machine repeatedly squeeze the clay, gradually reducing the distance between the rollers.

This fits in the “old news” category. Washing parts after they’ve been sanded to remove dust and oil has been a perpetual problem for us. Washing them by hand was labor intensive, and we could not find a suitable parts washer. So, about three years ago, we designed and built this computer controlled washer, or simpleton robot. It washes and rinses the parts with a high pressure like in a car wash while tumbling the parts slowly like in a clothes washer; drys them with heated air like in a dryer; and dumps the parts in a waiting tub like a coffee roaster. The parts are immediately ready for paint and finishing. The operation is so automated that after loading the machine, the operator only needs to press a single button to start the cycle.